Every homesteader’s goal is to be as self-sustaining as possible. In trying to reach that goal, many of us raise animals. It’s difficult to keep many animals without hay, and conventional thinking ...

PUTNEY — Mark Bowen, of Meadowdale Farm, uses a hay baler to collect the hay from an 11-acre field on Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020. Bowen was only able to make one round hay bale from the second cut of ...

Photo A: The author’s grandson, Austin, experiments with using the baler to form a bale. When you build your own wooden hay baler, you can hand bale hay without the need for equipment, so you can ...

A July 28 article, “Hay Day,” gave a very good summary of the local Swiss Pioneer Preservation Association’s annual Hay Day. Demonstrations of the old ways of haymaking with hand tools and the changes ...

Farmers work tirelessly throughout the spring and summer to grow, cut, and store hay to feed their livestock throughout the year. But how exactly is the hay created? Haymaking is a process – and it ...

For centuries, farmers cut and moved hay by hand. Then horses made the work quicker and a bit easier. In the early 1900s, machines like the automatic baler changed everything. At Big Spring Farm Days, ...